Orientul Mijlociu

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani faces multiple challenges and constituencies to move his agenda.

The Iraqi parliament approved the new government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Oct. 27, as the 29-page ministerial program put forth by Sudani was put to a vote and received more than 250 of 329 parliamentarians’ votes.

Iran played a key role in helping form the new Iraqi government.

Iraq’s new government under Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani is likely to be on better terms with Iran than the previous government.

The Coordination Framework, the coalition which brought Sudani to office last week, and which consists of Iran-backed groups and paramilitary factions, was able to form the government after Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — an Iraqi nationalist who has long been critical of Iran — withdrew his bloc from parliament this past June.

The U.S. military is prepared to take action to defend American troops and allies in the Middle East, following a media report that Iran could be preparing attacks against Saudi Arabia and Iraq, national security and defense officials said Tuesday.

Iran’s nationwide uprising marks its 45th day on Sunday after escalating protests in many cities across the country, especially as college students took to the streets in large numbers on Saturday. Following the onslaught against Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology earlier this month, regime authorities deployed their forces into two campuses in the capital and the city of Mashhad where anti-regime dissent has been escalating.

Despite the warning, the protests swelled, and faced an escalation in violent police raids on funerals, campuses and dormitories.

As anti-government unrest entered a seventh week in Iran, the commander of the country’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned protesters to go home.

Iran’s judiciary chief is the latest official to call for an end to protests.

The latest Iranian official to call for an end to the protests in Iran is Judiciary Chief Justice Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei.

During a speech today amongst judiciary officials, Mohseni Ejei referred to the protests as “riots” and said that those who support them “claiming to support the people of Iran” are also those who fund terrorists behind such attacks as the one on the shrine in Shiraz last Wednesday that killed at least 13 people. He asked rhetorically, “Who trains them, who arms them, who creates their fraudulent papers?”

According estimates, the number of the men and their family members from the Western Balkan countries exceeded 1000 person who travelled to the territory of Iraq or Syria for supporting their Muslim comrades. Most of them joined the Islamic State there, while the minority enriched the ranks of Jabhat al-Nusra or other smaller jihadist groups. However, hundreds of them have already returned from the Middle East to their country of origin in the recent years or months where they faced different treatment depending on their gender and age.

Abstract

Drawing upon the first author’s position within the Kosovo* Security Council Secretariat and utilizing internal government reports and statistics, this article provides an overview of the Kosovan experience dealing with returnee ‘foreign fighters’ from Syria and Iraq. So far, at least five returnees have been involved in planning domestic attacks, thus reaffirming academic analyses and recent reports suggesting that it is a minority of returnees who present an immediate terrorist threat. Nevertheless, a small number of returnees remain highly radicalized and are both willing and determined to attack at home. The Kosovan approach to managing this risk is discussed, to include challenges and lessons learned.